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Greece

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131–140 of 209 posts

Re: Greece

#131

Post by Atropos »

hughw wrote: post #111

I just read this Duke law paper[1] saying that in 2012 Greek creditors took a 64% haircut. I had not realized they had received such debt relief already. From the report: "Within the class of high- and middle-income countries, only three restructuring cases were harsher on private creditors: Iraq in 2006 (91%), Argentina in 2005 (76%) and Serbia and Montenegro in 2004 (71%). There are a number of cases of highly inde…

Greece supporters do not seem to care about facts at all. Same for the GDP numbers, they always use the graph from 2008, whereas the graph from 1999 is much more enlightening: https://twitter.com/jmackin2/status/615576571890565121

Even in the boom years, the numbers of Greek patents granted per year is ridiculously low, the number of Greek universities in the worlds top-500 is ridiculously low and Greece's rank in the world banks Doing Business report is still the worst of any OECD country - after 5 years of "reforms"!

Re: Greece

#132

Post by Xylakant »

crdoconnor wrote: post #120
reagency wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote is silly, it completely justifies fraud. There has to be a balance.

The balance can involve slamming the individuals in jail who enabled Greece to misrepresent its finances before it joined. Unfortunately, actually prosecuting fraud seems to be a minority view, whereas punishing entire countries (primarily those on a low income, too) for the sins of a few is the norm in Europe.

Some of these individuals were greek and are under greek jurisdiction. None were prosecuted. It would give the moral position of the greek government a huge boost if they started doing that, just like Iceland did in its default.

Re: Greece

#133

Post by revanx_ »

I've meet a handful of young greeks(Age: 17-29) since 2010 and when asked about their situation, especially the unemployment rate they all said the same thing, young greeks don't want to work unless it's a high paying gov. secure job with 6 hours a day 5 days a week schedule. Ironically all of them were gamers but considering that the unemployment rate is about 50% with young greeks, it's hard to argue with that.

Also one important thing was said many times, most of greeks try to avoid taxes or they don't pay them at all. They've told me this is especially rampant in tourism. It's hard to argue with that, depending on where you traveled you can experience this first hand.

It's so easy to blame everyone else for your own problems, lets not forget how much money has actually been pushed to Greece since 2010 via financial injections and what have they done with it? What good is it to keep pushing more and more money into Greece when the people and it's gov don't want to change and without change how can you expect any progress?

Re: Greece

#134

Post by Atropos »

cbaleanu wrote: post #67
misterbarnaby wrote: post #44

"They had knowingly and purposefully brought weak states into the Eurozone, because they genuinely, even nobly, wished to build a large, strong, United Europe." For folks who know Europe/Europeans well, is this true?

Not an expert, but the popular culture some EU countries is that the greek and spanish work less than people from NW Europe. Personally I think this is highly subjective though.

Not working less hours, but much less "productive" in an economic sense. See US Patent statistics: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_utl.htm

Even in the boom years of 1999-2008, Greece had like 20 patents / year, while Austria or Finland have 600-900, despite having a smaller population.

Re: Greece

#135

Post by mafribe »

josephlord wrote: post #61
mike_hearn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reforms are the only long term solution. They're reforms like, maybe Greeks should retire at the same age that other people in Europe do. Maybe hairdressing should not be considered a 'dangerous profession', thus unlocking various benefits. Maybe Greek train drivers should not be paid $130,000 a year to drive near-empty trains. Maybe Greece should be able to grow its own food instead of importing more than half o…

No reforms in the world will allow Greece to meet the current liabilities, even the IMF says so. The bigger the surplus the Government runs (to pay back the creditors) the more the economy will shrink and the further more they will miss their target by. Germany isn't paying for Greece, it (well the troika but Germany is significantly calling the shots) is effectively governing Greece by a series of manufactured crise…

    Singling out a groups as scapegoats for all blame and the aspect of collective punishment
In line with many on the right, you are singling out Germany as a group as a scapegoat! Indeed Syriza's approach to the negotiations was to run a divide-and-conquer on the EU, trying to pit the rest of the EU against Germany. This backfired badly.

   Germany isn't paying for Greece
In what sense? Greece owes Germany €88.7 Billion.

    Sensible people trying to maximise the return on their loans would restructure them to take some loss but to enable Greece to recover to be able to pay the bulk of them.
Which is of course exactly what the troika is trying to do (however imperfectly), and much debt has already been written off or rolled over, but the Syriza government is blocking this as much as possible.

   there is something profoundly undemocratic
Greece is perfectly free democratically to decide to ignore the troika, and default on all debt. Greece is also free to other other countries to pay for its debt, e.g. Japan, the US, Venezuela. But Greece has no unconditional right to other people's money. Why should Latvia and Lithuania, who are much poorer than Greece, finance a ridiculously bloated Greek military? There are much poorer countries still, Cambodia, Malawi, Niger, Angola. Why is it so vital that the rest of the world blows billions on fairly wealthy Greece, rather than these much more needy countries?

Re: Greece

#136

Post by mafribe »

andmarios wrote: post #90
telepheron wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That same report says that failure of the economy to recover is caused by the failure of the government to implement the necessary changes, worsened by the current government during the past 5 months.

Well, IMF has to explain why it threw billions of dollars to an unsustainable debt. But there are deeper issues too. What the creditors really want is to micromanage Greece while they do not understand our economy and culture. They want to change everything in a couple of years. Change takes time, you can't turn a Greek into a German or an American in 3 or 5 years. In order to do this and protect their interests, the…

      Siemens for example [...] has spent over 2 billion euros (!) in bribery to Greek politicians and public servants.
Can you please substantiate this outrageous claim? The Wikipedia page [1] mentions approx €150k.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal

Re: Greece

#137

Post by bcg1 »

revanx_ wrote: post #133

I've meet a handful of young greeks(Age: 17-29) since 2010 and when asked about their situation, especially the unemployment rate they all said the same thing, young greeks don't want to work unless it's a high paying gov. secure job with 6 hours a day 5 days a week schedule. Ironically all of them were gamers but considering that the unemployment rate is about 50% with young greeks, it's hard to argue with that. Als…

You make good points but it is multifaceted. The money "pushed to Greece" isn't really available for them to squander as you're suggesting... it is used to roll over loans from private European banking institutions that were reckless and stupid to buy Greek bonds in the first place, and place them on the backs of taxpayers instead. Greeks are understandably ticked off that they are being choked out by the conditions of rolling over those loans, for which they see little benefit.

Re: Greece

#138

Post by mafribe »

laurencerowe wrote: post #80
Amezarak wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a purely economic solution, a Grexit combined with a default might work. However, who would step up and finance the ongoing deficit? As I added in my edit, Greece has a primary budget surplus. There would be no ongoing deficit. Existing debt would be paid off with the expedient of default and currency devaluation, just as other countries have historically done. A little rough patch and then things look up. Seems…

Leaving the Euro does not mean leaving the EU. The "Eurozone" is the subset of EU countries using the Euro as their currency.

At this point the European contracts are such that a country can only leave the Euro if it leaves the EU.

However, I think it would be possible for the EU to agree to amend the contracts to allow Greece to leave the Euro while staying inside the EU, if Greece so wishes.

Re: Greece

#139

Post by nomercy400 »

visarga wrote: post #102
Shivetya wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU was never to be a transfer union, this setup was required to get the large economic countries to accept the weaker countries being admitted. National pride would mean political suicide for any leaders who suggest sending money out in the form of welfare. While I am quite willing to lambast the banks in the states for the mess they got into I am not so willing to do so with regards to their lending to Greece. S…

Lending money is always a transaction between two parties. Both should be responsible. The financial state of a country is easier to evaluate than that of a person, they shouldn't have faller for the tricks of Goldman Sachs. > According to investigative reports that appeared in Der Spiegel, the New York Times, BBC, and Bloomberg News from 2010 through 2012, Blankfein, now Goldman Sachs CEO, Cohn, now President and CO…

So accepting the fact that both are responsible, what should the EU do with their relations with Greece? They can demand the money back, but that isn't helping. They can expect no money back, but what to do then? Kick Greece out of the euro, and accept failure of the principle that once in the eurozone, you stay in the eurozone? Basically accepting failure.

Re: Greece

#140

Post by pjmlp »

revanx_ wrote: post #133

I've meet a handful of young greeks(Age: 17-29) since 2010 and when asked about their situation, especially the unemployment rate they all said the same thing, young greeks don't want to work unless it's a high paying gov. secure job with 6 hours a day 5 days a week schedule. Ironically all of them were gamers but considering that the unemployment rate is about 50% with young greeks, it's hard to argue with that. Als…

It is so easy to tell people how they should behave from the outside.

I am portuguese and my country is quite similar to Greece. I do know it quite well.

Many of those behaviors have deep roots in our societies. It just doesn't work someone from the outside coming and shouting at us how 10 million people should behave.

Try to leave in our countries for an year, then see how things are.

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